Table of contents

This page provides a more complete list of some of the markup sequences available in PmWiki.
Note that it's easy to create and edit pages without using any of the markups below, but if you ever need them, they're here.

Paragraphs

To create paragraphs, simply enter text. Use a blank line to start a new paragraph.

Words on two lines in a row will wrap and fill as needed (the normal XHTML behavior). To turn off the automatic filling, use the (:linebreaks:) directive above the paragraph.

Use \ (single backslash) at the end of a line to join the current line to the next one.

Use \\ (two backslashes) at the end of a line to force a line break.

Use \\\ (three backslashes) at the end of a line to force 2 line breaks.

Use [[<<]] to force a line break that will clear floating elements.

Indented Paragraphs (Quotes)

Arrows (->) at the beginning of a paragraph can be used to produce an indented paragraph. More hyphens at the beginning (--->) produce larger indents.

->Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Inverted Arrows (-<) at the beginning of a paragraph can be used to produce a paragraph with a hanging indent. Adding hyphens at the beginning (---<) causes all the text to indent.

-<Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

--<Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal. And that food would be good too.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers placed upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And that food would be good too.

Blocks of text to which (:linebreaks:) has been applied can be indented by preceding the first line of the block with indention arrows (->) and aligning subsequent lines under the first. An unindented line stops the block indentation. See Cookbook:MarkupTricks for an example.

Bulleted and Numbered Lists

Bullet lists are made by placing asterisks at the left margin. Numbered lists are made by placing number-signs (#) at the left margin. More asterisks/number-signs increases the level of bullet:

Definition Lists

Powerful new* featureWhen you define terms using this markupPmWiki will recognize them as PageTextVariablesthat you can use on any page or PageList.* Added in PmWiki version 2.2.0

Definition lists are made by placing colons at the left margin (and between each term and definition):

:term:definition of term
::second-level item: definition of 2nd-level item

term

definition of term

second-level item

definition of 2nd-level item

Whitespace Rules

Whitespace indentation in lists. Any line that begins with whitespace and aligns with a previous list item (whether bulleted, numbers or definitional) is considered to be "within" that list item. Text folds and wraps as normal, and the (:linebreaks:) directive is honored.

# First-level item\\
Whitespace used to continue item on a new line
# Another first-level item
# Whitespace combined with a single # to create a new item one level
deeper

First-level item Whitespace used to continue item on a new line

Another first-level item

Whitespace combined with a single # to create a new item one level deeper

Otherwise, lines that begin with whitespace are treated as preformatted text, using a monospace font and not generating linebreaks except where explicitly indicated in the markup. Note to administrators: Starting with version 2.2.0-beta41, this feature can be modified using $EnableWSPre. (Another way to create preformatted text blocks is by using the [@...@] markup.)

Horizontal Line

Four or more dashes (----) at the beginning of a line produce a horizontal line.

Escape sequence

Anything placed between [= and =] is not interpreted by PmWiki, but paragraphs are reformatted. This makes it possible to turn off special formatting interpretations and neutralise WikiWords that are not links (even easier is to use a tick ` in front, like `WikiWord).

It is also useful to use [= =] within other wiki structures, as this enables the inclusion of new lines in text values. The example below shows how to include a multi-line value in a hidden form field.

(:input hidden message "[=Line1
Line2=]":)

Special Characters

When creating pages it's common to use commercial trademarks, copyright, umlaut, and other non-keyboard symbols. therefore it's important that you have the means to input these special characters.

For a nice table of the same codes that show the codes with the output go to the Noble Desktop special character page.

Other ways to do it:

Character Map

Find the "Character Map" utility in your computer's System Tools folder. Click the symbol you're interested in, and note the keystroke information at the bottom of the box. You execute these by holding "Alt" while keying the numbers on the numerical keypad of your keyboard (not the numbers across the top of the board).

Tables

Tables are defined by enclosing cells with '||'.
A cell with leading and trailing spaces is centered; a cell with leading spaces is right-aligned; all other cells are left-aligned. An empty cell will cause the previous cell to span multiple columns. (There is currently no mechanism for spanning multiple rows.) A line beginning with '||' specifies the table attributes for subsequent tables. A '!' as the first character in a cell provides emphasis that can be used to provide headings. This is interesting stuff.